North Korea celebrates dictator's birth with flowers, no missiles

Apr. 15, 2013
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People visit giant statues of the late North Korean leaders, Kim Il Sung, left, and his son Kim Jong Il, in Pyongyang, North Korea, Monday, April 15, 2013. Oblivious to international tensions over a possible North Korean missile launch, Pyongyang residents spilled into the streets Monday to celebrate a major national holiday, the birthday of their first leader, Kim Il Sung. (AP Photo/Kyodo News) JAPAN OUT, MANDATORY CREDIT, NO LICENSING IN CHINA, HONG KONG, JAPAN, SOUTH KOREA AND FRANCE ORG XMIT: TOK817 / AP

by Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY

by Calum MacLeod, USA TODAY

SEOUL, South Korea â?? The wait continues to discover if North Korea will follow through on weeks of increasingly dire threats against South Korea, Japan and the United States, after the isolated nation marked a key holiday Monday with flowers and not with missile tests some in the region had feared.

Such tests, possibly from mobile launchers moved in recent weeks to North Korea's east coast, could still take place during or after the three-day public holiday to mark the 101st birth anniversary of regime founder Kim Il Sung on April 15, but Monday passed without incident.

Kim's grandson Kim Jung Un, 30, the third generation of the Kim family to rule North Korea, delivered floral baskets and "high tribute and humblest reverence" Monday to the embalmed bodies of Kim Il Sung, and his son Kim Jong Il, the younger Kim's father, reported the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Elsewhere in Pyongyang, the North's capital, hundreds of soldiers and citizens gathered in typically neat lines to offer flowers at two huge statues of the elder Kims, KCNA photos showed.

Just over the border in Seoul, a conservative group held a small-scale anti-Kim rally Monday afternoon, but most residents of the South Korean capital, long accustomed to the bellicose blasts of the neighbor from hell, calmly continued their normal routines.

Tensions have risen over the past two months as Pyongyang reacted with growing fury to United Nations sanctions following its 12 February nuclear test, and later to joint military exercises between South Korea and the USA, which flew B-2 stealth bombers from Missouri to the Korean peninsula last month to demonstrate U.S. commitment to its military ally.

In Tokyo Monday, concluding a 3-nation Asian tour dominated by the Korean crisis, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington was "open to authentic and credible negotiations on denuclearization" with North Korea. U.S. caution to re-open talks with Pyongyang is informed by years of the North Korean regime backtracking on its promises.

"We knew Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, but nobody knows Kim Jung Un, so that is one reason to worry more than usual," said Seoul taxi-driver Sung Hun Choo, 60. "But I have no worries there will be fighting. We're used to the North's threats here. Sometimes they want something, so they threaten many times, but in South Korea we are never scared," he said.

About 200 protestors, mostly retired men, gathered for an anti-Kim demonstration in central Seoul where they denounced Pyongyang's nuclear plans, shouted "Destroy Kim Jong Un" and burnt effigies of all three Kims. "We want to show that South Koreans are angry with the North's threats," said Choo Sun Hee, secretary general of a national security-focused parents' association, the rally organizer.

After South Korea's Ministry of Unification called for restraint, the group postponed plans to mark North Korea's national holiday by releasing large helium balloons at the border Monday to carry pro-democracy messages, chocolate bars and one dollar bills into the North. "North Korea announced they will attack if there are balloons, so we restrained ourselves, we don't want to give cause for war," said Choo. "We experienced the Korean War. Talks and peaceful negotiation are the only solution," he said.

On a Seoul sidewalk packed with over a dozen traditional fortune tellers, plying their trade from small tents, customers Monday sought the usual advice â?? career and marriage prospects â?? and not the likelihood of Armageddon. "Nobody has asked me about North Korea in recent weeks," said fortune teller, Lee Ju Yeon, 61. "If there is a war between North and South Korea, we will all die together, so it can't happen," she said.